Josh Kirk received an email Friday morning instructing staffers not to come into the Carmel, IN office of Lennar Mortgage. There was something wrong w/ the HVAC system, the message said.

Not long after, he discovered that his managers had made it into the office. They scheduled a Zoom & shared the bad news: Kirk & 2 others in the office were being laid off w/o severance. HR would handle the rest.

“No severance right before Christmas is the most low-class thing ever,” Kirk said.

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Kirk was told there were sales & ops cuts at other Lennar regions as well. The Scoop spoke to LOs in 2 other regions who weren’t aware of cuts as of early Friday afternoon. There was a conference call in which Lennar Mortgage leaders said Lennar Homes had lowered its ‘26 forecast & the mortgage arm had to reduce staff to match the new projection, sources said.

It’s not clear how many staffers were laid off at Lennar Mortgage. Reps for Lennar didn’t immediately respond. 

It’s unusual to see large LO cuts at homebuilder-affiliated lenders. They’re typically paid a low base salary (≈$20K) & must hit performance metrics. Lennar doesn’t measure its LOs performance on overall volume. Rather, it focuses on capture rate: if too many buyers are going through non-Lennar-affiliated mortgage firms, it’s frowned upon. Kirk said he had a few rough months, but has generally been an above-average performer. 

There are variables for LOs. Some of the sales agents at Lennar Homes who are paired w/ the Lennar Mortgage LOs still send a big percentage of their pipe to outside lenders, which will hurt their partner’s numbers at the mortgage arm, Kirk said.

Kirk, who has an 18-month old baby, is planning on taking some time off before getting another job.

Roughly 600 miles away in Charlotte, Jay, an underwriter at Wells Fargo, last week received news that he was being let go after 22 years at the stagecoach. He did receive severance, but the layoff still stung.

“Of course anyone who knows me knows I have been prepping for this day since Day 1,” he said. “And which is a byproduct of watching my father go through the exact same experience - same title, same employer - 30 yrs ago.”

A lot of folks missed it, but Freddie Mac on Wednesday quietly established the first federal regulator policy on the use of AI in mortgage operations. The GSE has created a framework that lenders will have to follow once the calendar flips to ‘26. Procedurally speaking, it’s a very big deal.

Lenders now need:

The policy has to be reviewed at least once a year to ensure compliance w/ applicable law. Some policies go into effect Jan. 1, others on March 11. Lenders will also have to indemnify Freddie for any/all liabilities arising from AI/ML use lol.

Here’s industry consultant Paul Hindman’s take on it. 

This commitment to responsible use directly tackles the fear of algorithmic bias, allowing lenders to use AI to potentially expand credit access & serve non-traditional borrowers more accurately than outdated manual processes ever could. The comprehensive indemnity (effective March 11, 2026) defines the one boundary that matters: risk ownership. By making you fully responsible for your AI's decisions, Freddie Mac incentivizes the highest levels of internal quality control.

Hindman added: This is our chance to shed the high manual production costs, embrace compliance as a competitive tool, and leapfrog competitors who remain stuck in the inefficient past.

I’m betting that lenders are thinking more about the practical implications of this new policy. So check this out: Karthik Kumar of LendArch shared 2 roadmap documents w/ The Scoop’s readers: 

1) A checklist of what a seller/servicer should have in place
2) A practical view of how to treat key AI models within existing model risk, fair lending & vendor risk frameworks. 

This is available exclusively for insiders 👇(upgrade to also read about a growing mortgage fraud scheme as well as a few🍦scoops).